


And death i think is no parenthesis

by whitefang (radialarch)



Series: the e. e. cummings collection [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-05
Updated: 2012-03-05
Packaged: 2017-11-01 04:45:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/352069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radialarch/pseuds/whitefang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From <i>A Study in Pink</i> to <i>The Reichenbach Falls</i>-- Sherlock and John's relationship as portrayed in the show.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And death i think is no parenthesis

**Author's Note:**

> Based on ["since feeling is first"](http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2006/06/04) by e. e. cummings.

**i. since feeling is first**

It wasn’t.

It wasn’t when Sherlock was five, watching Mummy cry into her pillow and Mycroft explained, shell-shocked but voice firm, that Daddy wouldn’t be coming home anymore.

It wasn’t when Sherlock was eleven, being pushed by small hands and tumbling down the steps, all seventeen of them, and even through the sickening _crack_ that said something was broken, he clenched his jaws shut and never even whimpered.

It wasn’t when Sherlock was eighteen, going to uni and being bitten by a tiny, snapping dog, then looking up at the apologetic owner and shaking it off, because skin would mend and dogs would learn better, and the entire thing was just transport, anyway.

It wasn’t when Sherlock was twenty, and the world was bright in a cocaine-induced glow, before it crashed and left Sherlock alone, hands shaking and reaching out for more, anything, a distraction.

It wasn’t when Sherlock was twenty-six, and Mycroft deigned to look down from his throne and issue an ultimatum, so Sherlock picked himself off the concrete, wandered into a crime scene and saw the answers in sharp, white letters floating in the air.

And then it is.

It is when Sherlock is looking down the eyepiece of a microscope, and a man with too-short hair and a misplaced limp comes through the door and hands over his phone, engraved and all wrong for him.

It is when Sherlock leads him to the flat and feels the sudden urge to collect all his unopened letters and pin them to the mantelpiece, because the flat used to be _his_ , but now it needs to be _theirs_.

It is when Sherlock sits at a booth by the window, and Angelo sets a candle on the table, and the flickering light hits not the back of the other seat but the face of a person, asking and answering, wanting, listening, taking.

It is when Sherlock runs across rooftops, and someone else follows, all trust and no questions, and the chase ends in a screech, he’s wrong and out of breath, but they still laugh together, no canes necessary.

It is when Sherlock looks down at the pill in his hand, turns it over slowly and raises it to his mouth, then the shot rings out and the cabbie goes down and it’s only Sherlock, breathing, backing away from the abyss.

It is when Sherlock has a blanket around his shoulders and the words rush out until he traps them all in a sharp _clip_ , because he wants every way to describe John Watson all for himself, laid out neatly in a list, to read and savour at will.

 

**ii. wholly to be a fool**

It’s something neither would ever admit to.

But Sarah sees the possessive bent of their beings, the way they lean in just a bit too closely, the subtle shift as they orient themselves toward each other, always reaching, searching, wanting.

She hears the sentences half-completed and understood, the warring _yes_ and _no_ buzzing at her presence, the echo on a curve that leaves her on the outside and shelters the two, together.

She feels the spark, the tension, the fragile care, and graciously gives up her cause as lost.

Because Sarah isn’t a fool. Not when it comes to this.

 

**iii. my blood approves**

Mycroft’s job is to observe, to notice, and that’s exactly what he does as Sherlock sprawls on an armchair and frantic steps rattle the stairway.

“Are you okay?” is the question, but underneath is _I was worried_ , and below is _I missed you_ , and far, much farther down, buried so deep that perhaps neither questioner nor answerer knows where to find it, is a silent, wordless _I need you, don't leave me, don't ever let me go_.

But Mycroft, whose world revolves around people and their emotions, can sense it, a rare gem waiting for discovery, and he knows one day it will be washed up to the surface, polished and shaped in the maelstrom of their lives, and they will pick it up together, finally understanding, accepting.

 

**iv. we are for each other**

From the first, Irene knows it’s not meant to be, and it has nothing to do with sexuality or gender or any other check mark that means so little, but the sense of belonging – the sense of falling.

It’s there in the small glancing cut above the cheekbones; and it’s there in the unwrapping of a coat to wrap her body, all to spare an uncomfortable gaze; and it’s there in the walking out the room to set her plans on fire, and in the walking back, an apology and a gun to his head; and most of all it’s there in the intake of breath and the countdown to three and a desperate "Stop" and the sharp beeps of the keycode, the sigh of relief.

It’s there in the way that when one falls, the other stays, and Irene is alone, plunging out the window.

It’s there when she returns, and the words that greet her are “Tell him you’re alive,” with the ferocity of one who knows not that he loves, a love both tender and burning, and she accuses him of being jealous because _she is_.

It’s there in the cool fingers wrapped around her wrist, fingers that offer no promises and ask for none, and at the end of the world she’ll know that she’s overstepped her boundaries, worn out her welcome, and retreat, a mere intruder in a vast potentiality.

 

**v. for life's not a paragraph**

Henry Knight lives, and he remembers two men.

They are entirely separate – the light and the dark, the authority and the rebel, the warmth and the frost – and yet they aren't.

They are the points where the spectrum curls round, catching its own tail and becoming a ring unbroken.

They are the beginning and the end, so much that there  _is_  no end and no beginning, only a story stretching back and forward along the certainty of the infinite.

They are the order and the chaos, and each undoes the other's doing, so that one may catch a breath of calm before the whiplash, the chase, the lightning in the air.

And they have no full stops, running into each other in an explosion of words, a work of art in which every part is purely itself and yet still more, creating meaning out of atmosphere and the atmosphere from vacuum.

The two become one and lift Henry from the depths, so he starts, gasps, and returns, heart thudding and head swirling, newly formed and eyes wide open.

Begin, once more.

 

**vi. And death i think is no parenthesis**

John Watson has crossed paths with death many times, and sometimes it is violent, claiming its own in a shower of blood and shrapnel; sometimes it is cruel, wringing out quick, desperate gasps from a body long given up; sometimes it is wary, surreptitiously stealing in through the darkness and tugging away a life, unexpectedly gentle.

And sometimes it is a figure perched high on a ledge, a phone call in his ear, and a good-bye, a fall, a sick wetness on the pavement.

And John has fought, always, with death – with hurried tightening of blood-stained wrappings; with intravenous drips and new drug cocktails; with lights burning bright and a hand in his grasp – but this he cannot grasp and the moment is lost.

And the pulse is gone from the wrist.

And the eyes are open but empty.

Then there are hands that hold him back as he too, falls, tries to follow and finds that he can’t, that the way forward has shut before him unforgivably, unacceptably, unfathomably.

So he raises his head and his fingers to his brow, a salute both farewell and a promise of later, looking down at the gravestone so simply engraved, and he asks.

_One more miracle, Sherlock, for me._

And without reason, without logic, he believes.

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'ed, sorry. Something quick I wrote because the poem asked. 
> 
> ETA: _Hounds_ is now a section! Yay?


End file.
